Intel SSD 330 Series pricing leaked, arriving April 13?

Although an official announcement isn't expected until sometime around May -- according to recent rumors -- the Intel 330 SSD was spotted on various online web retailers over the weekend, revealing some additional details about the upcoming drive. These include the arrival of the SATAIII 6Gbps interface to Intel's budget SSD line and sequential read / write speeds of up to 500MB/s and 450MB/s, respectively.

In terms of performance, that's a significant bump from the 320 Series' claimed sequential read / write speeds of up to 270MB/s and 220MB/s. On paper it actually matches that of the 510 Series, which uses a Marvell "Van Gogh" 88SS9174 controller, and is only slightly behind the SandForce-based 520 Series.

Of course you should take those with a grain of salt and wait for real world performance numbers instead. After all, we would't expect Intel to cannibalize sales of its higher end drives.

SabrePC lists the 120GB variant at $149, which is what an 80GB Intel 320 SSD would cost you, while the 60GB and 180GB models are listed at $89 and $234, respectively. Assuming those prices are accurate that puts the price-per gigabyte at roughly $1.25 - $1.40, which is not bad at all for the performance bump you'd get.

Although rumors suggested a May launch, Amazon UK lists April 13th as launch day, so we'll know more soon.